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Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

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Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#251
post #8

Surely Apple can use information from their Find My account to figure out who the AirTag was registered to. Even if the tag has been destroyed. That should be trivially easy, right?

No, AirTags/the find my network are designed to make it impossible for apple to track anything about a device on the network. If you actually provide the AirTag to police, then they can get the serial number, from which they can get the associated account.

Assuming that whomever put the AirTags their used their own actual account.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#252
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being offensive, it does not matter if you are in downtown SF - stop being afraid of the homeless and black people and assuming that they are more likely to harm you than someone you know. That statistics are not with you there. But let's look at some statistics: https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm Bathtub: 341 Assault by sharp object: 1,805 From that, assuming their data is correct, for every…

> stop being afraid of the homeless and black people I'm not afraid of homeless and black people, I'm afraid of clinically insane people. The kind which are not legally responsible for their actions. And why did you pick "Assault by sharp object: 1,805" instead of "Assault by firearm: 10,801" or just "Assault: 16,765"? Maybe because that changes the odds from 1 vs 5 to 1 vs 50.

Sorry, that was overly provocative and arguably unjustifiably personal. I apologize. The point is that the statistics do not back up many fears.

> And why did you pick "Assault by sharp object: 1,805" instead of "Assault by firearm: 10,801" or just "Assault: 16,765"?

The example was a 'stabbing rampage', that was specifically to try and find the number of knife attacks in the US resulting in fatality, and out of those number where someone is randomly attacking people in public.

Overall, we are still dealing with pretty small numbers whether it's 1 vs 5 or 1 vs 50 (50x improved chance of winning the lottery is still nearly negligible odds). In the case of knife attack, based on these numbers, it would be at most 1 in 5.

The ultimate point is the statistics do not back up many of these fears. For example in response to an actual knife rampage I observed a lot of chatter about getting a concealed carry permit etc.

These same statistics show that assault by firearm is way more likely than by knife, and having more guns around is more likely to have examples where they are used. Hence, the irrational fear of a knife rampage is prompting people to carry a gun, which then dramatically increases the chance of an accidental shooting in their own household, suicide, and/or assault where that person gets into a confrontation they could have walked away from but instead had road rage and shot someone else.

Household, accidental shootings are relatively common, and suicide is exceptionally common, yet all that seems like less risks for firearm possession compared to needing the firearm to actually protect yourself from a knife attack, which is at most 5 times more likely than slipping and drowning in your own bathtub.

In the case of a bathtub, it's common and does not have the same confirmation bias we get from headlines of rampages, yet it poses a fairly similar danger to you as someone going on a knife rampage.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#253

is this part right? > If a foreign AirTag is around ANY Apple device that’s connected to a network, a nefarious AirTag owner will know its location! the airtag is phoning home over all apple hardware, whether or not it belongs to the owner of the tag?

The find my network is designed to ensure that apple - or any malicious actor will complete access to apple's internal networks - cannot track any device

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the thief bother to track your car back to your house to steal later? Why not just drive around the residential areas where the cars are parked and just choose one at the time you want to do the theft?

In Amsterdam I once met an Eastern European career criminal who followed people driving home after work hours and waited for them to get into the shower. Then he'd pick their front door lock and take the keys. Unrelated, he also had a room in his apartment set up to grow weed, with some serious climate control and artificial lighting. He was dealing this pot. He had no papers or permit to stay... what crazy folk.

Pretty bold. I don't know much about Amsterdam, but I've heard burglars in the USA are usually very careful not to break into a house when people are home, as the consequences are much more severe compared to burglarizing an unoccupied house.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#256
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this is any way an anonymous tracker? The police could get a subpoena for Apple to divulge the iCloud account, credit card, and phone number of the owner of this AirTag. Using air tags to conduct illegal activity is stupid.

Huh, right, with all the talk about the privacy preserving location sharing, I missed that Airtags have a serial number that Apple can look up. However, my main criticism (that Apple customers were not asked whether they want to participate in a network that may indirectly reveal their location) still stands.

The find my network is designed so that it does not directly or indirectly reveal location of the primary device or any intermediaries to apple

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#257

While it’s theoretically possible that this happened, I think this particular story was made up. For a number of reasons: 1) How did the stalker know that that’s her car? She said she was on a night out. Unless she went back to her car all the time, he must have seen her arrive in it. 2) Sticking an AirTag to the inside of the front wheel well isn’t easy. There is dirt and grime there and the surfaces aren’t flat. Th…

Read on the news that this kind of tracking with AirTags is used to steal cars. A car thief attaches it to the target vehicle, and then simply arrives to the place where it is parked overnight. The thief removes AirTag and then waits for an opportunity to steal the car.

How is that better that just stealing a car without the airtag?

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#258

The interesting thing is that I have seen multiple reports of this ( think this is is the third), but in every case, they have destroyed it, lost it, or thrown it away before hand - not given it to the police. Apple can't tell who the devices is from signals in the wild, but they can figure out who it is if someone gives them the physical device. (Apple tracks the serial number of the device, and from what I understa…

I will (probably) destroy it too immediately. I have no idea why someone put airtag on my car, maybe they want to know location of my house, or want to know where I live?

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#259
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read on the news that this kind of tracking with AirTags is used to steal cars. A car thief attaches it to the target vehicle, and then simply arrives to the place where it is parked overnight. The thief removes AirTag and then waits for an opportunity to steal the car.

How is that better that just stealing a car without the airtag?

It is not attached to average cars, they attach them to cars that are hot in the market

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#260
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read on the news that this kind of tracking with AirTags is used to steal cars. A car thief attaches it to the target vehicle, and then simply arrives to the place where it is parked overnight. The thief removes AirTag and then waits for an opportunity to steal the car.

How is that better that just stealing a car without the airtag?

Lmao exactly. This argument seems absurd - just steal the car it’s not like she was driving a lambo
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